Understanding and harnessing the remarkable properties of materials, whether for medicine, energy, or information technology, requires instruments that can accurately probe a material's structure and properties. As technologies advance and materials reduce in size, the tools used to interact with and study materials must also miniaturize. Spectrophotometers, instruments that employ light to probe materials, are essential tools in virtually every area of materials research, and yet the light beams that are emitted from most spectrophotometers are millimeters across rather than micrometers. This project addresses regional and national needs for advanced instrumentation with miniaturized (micro) light beams via the acquisition of a microspectrophotometer. This instrument provides unprecedented capabilities for focusing light into microscopic (less than one micrometer) regions of a material and quantitatively analyzing its structure and properties. This instrument merges five traditionally distinct measurement techniques to yield rich insight into the physical and chemical properties of microstructured and nanostructured materials. This new research capability enables studies with applications that span across multiple areas of research, including 3-D printing, solar cells, and cancer diagnostics. Education of high school, undergraduate and graduate students is advanced through hands-on training and access to the microspectrophotometer. The instrument will be a focal point for classes and training activities for students that explore material properties, surfaces, and light-matter interaction. The location of the instrument in a shared instrument facility with a strong track record of providing broad access enables educational and research activities that positively impact regional universities, government, non-profit users, and industry.
Advancements in research on nanomaterials, biological materials, and their composites are placing increased demands on traditional light-based spectroscopies?especially those that lack the focusing optics needed to resolve nano-to-micrometer scale variations in structure, composition, and properties. The major research instrumention acquired in this project a microspectrophotometer, which combines five traditional spectroscopies into a single platform by using the magnifying optics of a high-powered microscope. The instrument performs transmission, reflection, fluorescence, polarization, and Raman spectroscopies, enabling a single region of a single material to be probed in series by each technique. By employing quartz optics, the usable spectrum extends from 300 nm to 2100 nm, which creates new opportunities to explore small band-gap materials such as those of interest in solar cells and fiber optic communications or to explore label-free detection in cellular diagnostics. The principal objectives of this program are to establish a microspectrophotometer in a shared instrumentation facility in the Chapel Hill Analytical and Nanofabrication Laboratory, to exploit the instrument's capabilities in the fields of electronic and photonic materials, soft matter, and biomaterials, and to use the instrument as a platform for educating a diverse body of students from UNC Chapel Hill and neighboring institutions.
